As opium surges back, women pay a grave price

“As if we needed to be allowed. We could have done it when we took over the country and before we installed that lame a$$ government.”

I used to think the same thing. However, all the war vets I have spoken with seem to indicate it would have just made things harder for us to pacify the region and caused more U.S. casulties. The common Abdul makes his living growing poppies for opium. Short of extreme force (which pushes them towards the Taliban, et. al.) how do we convince them to grow food crops instead (which don’t pay well)? It is like trying to convince a U.S. ghetto dweller to get a job at McDonald’s for minimum wage instead of dealing drugs to make more money in a week than a year working for minimum wage.

Additionally, the area is not just the supplier of illicit opium, but opium used by legitimate companies to manufacture medical morphine.

Peronally, I want to play the “bad guy” and eradicate the crops, but I realize (in the short term and possibly long term) it will create ill feelings among the local population that could backfire on our attempts to suppress the Taliban. This is a situation where it is best not to have a heavy handed person like myself at the helm. I wonder how General Petraus would deal with this?

We should have just gone and used extreme force or the threat of it. We push plenty of them the other way already in that region and always will no matter how we conduct ourselves. Just being there is enough to do that. We should have drawn the line a long time ago. I think most would understand why we wouldn't want to allow opium production, why we wouldn't want a huge billion dollar opium business where we allow them to produce ninety something percent of the world's heroin supply and fund our enemies in the process. If not, screw ‘em. It is funding our enemies. It cannot be allowed in a country we occupy in a time of war. That's just stupid and it makes us look incompetent and weak. It's more than just embarrassing though, it really hurts us. It was a strategic decision to allow the the opium industry to continue in Afghanistan, and it was a bad one. Of course we'd have been in a lot better position to clean up that mess had we not have gone into Iraq, but that's another matter.

“We should have just gone and used extreme force or the threat of it.”

I am a traditional military type, and I prefer total war. However, the “shock & awe” of total war didn’t work in Iraq. The mideast mindset is just something us westeners can’t understand.

Read the book, “Blackhawk Down.” There are times that too much force against folks that are numb to it will just backfire on you.

Believe me when I say that I don’t like having to accept that “new” realty.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.